It is well known, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,286,925, to turn on a liquid well pump after a predetermined downtime when the well has been shut down due to pumpoff. It is known to provide control circuits for shutting off power to a pumping well when the well has been pumped dry or pumped off. Such time clocking of pumping wells has been a standard practice for many years as an attempt to prevent damaging fluid pound due to pumpoff. Generally, over sized pumps are installed on oil wells in order to obtain maximum production, but fluid pound or pumpoff can occur when the pumps remove the liquid faster than the formation's inflow can replace it. Therefore, a downtime should be selected which allows adequate fluid buildup. However, if the downtime is too long a period, the production rate from the well will be decreased.
One method to determine the optimum downtime for a well is to produce a fluid buildup curve. This curve is a plot of pump submergence (fluid depth) on the y axis versus downtime on the x axis. However, gathering the data for creating a fluid buildup curve is disadvantageous because it is difficult and expensive to obtain the information of fluid buildup.
Instead, the present invention is directed to a method of running tests and acquiring data for determining a relationship between pump runtime until pumpoff versus pump downtime to produce a graph for determining the optimum downtime for a well. This method provides a easier way of obtaining data and automatically selects the optimum downtime.